The Russian Language
Russian is the native tongue of over 160 million people and is spoken as a second language by almost as many, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. The Russian language is the primary means of communication across the territories of Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Meanwhile, the language’s motherland of Russia has emerged from the turmoil following the end of the Cold War as a leading economic and political power. Here are some facts to consider:
- Russian is the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is one of the official languages of the United Nations.
- There are over 38 million Russian-speaking Internet users, making it the ninth most common language on the Internet.
- Russia has a 99.4% literacy rate.
Russian is one of the most difficult languages to learn for English-speakers, requiring at least two years of study to achieve proficiency. There are numerous challenges posed to any Russian translation job. Both of the letters ‘
’ and ‘
’ can mean “and,” so which is appropriate in a given context? What is the difference between a perfective and an imperfective verb? And don’t be surprised if someone asks you in what magazine (‘
’) you were; they just want to know in what “store” you were shopping!
Cyrillic Alphabet
The Russian language is written using the Cyrillic alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th-10th centuries CE by the followers of St. Cyril (its namesake) and St. Methodius. It was created for the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe. The oldest literature written in Cyrillic was a translation of the Bible and other church texts. The Cyrillic alphabet was reformed during the reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725) as the dialect of Moscow became the standard for written Russian.
While the original Cyrillic alphabet had 43 letters, many have fallen out of use. Modern Russian has 32 letters, the same as Ukrainian, while Bulgarian and Serbian both have 30 letters. One letter, ‘?,’ was introduced in 1783 by the Russian Academy, but it is commonly replaced by the older letter ‘e’ in writing. About half of the Cyrillic letters have easily recognizable counterparts in the Latin alphabet. This ensures that although there is no universally recognized method of writing Russian in the Latin alphabet, a process known as Romanization, most Romanized Russian translations will closely resemble each other.
Russian Language Characteristics
Aside from its distinctive alphabet, what other characteristics make the Russian language unique?
- There are no definite or indefinite articles.
- Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number, gender and case.
- Russian is prone to creating variations of words by stacking its many prefixes, suffixes, and infixes onto a base word.
- Multiple negatives are compulsory in Russian. For example,
literally means “No-one never to no-one nothing does not forgive,” or as we would say in English, “No one ever forgives anyone for anything.” - The basic word order in Russian is Subject-Verb-Object, like in English. However, there is considerable flexibility in practice.
- In Russian, dates are written in Day/Month/Year form.
- The word for “to be” (
) is rarely used in the present tense. - The Russian verb system focuses on whether an action has been or will be completed, instead of on whether the action occurred in the past, present or will occur in the future.
- Verb endings indicate whether or not the action was completed successfully.
- Russian pronunciation is very tricky. Almost every consonant has a “wet” counterpart that is pronounced differently. Many sounds have no equivalent in English.
The Russian Market
Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has abandoned the economic controls of its Soviet predecessor in favor of the free market. Although it has hit a few rough patches in the transition, the Russia of today features a large and rapidly growing marketplace. Here are some details to consider:
- The Russian GDP is the seventh largest in the world. It has grown an average of 7% every year for the past decade.
- Russia exported over 6 billion barrels of crude oil and petroleum products in 2007, second only to Saudi Arabia.
- Russian was taught throughout the former Soviet Union, making it a regional language of business.
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